Chapter 771 - 444: A "Heart-to-Heart" Talk with the Queen Mother

Her final glance toward Zou Feng was still thick with lingering reluctance. Her acting skills truly earned some of his admiration. One had to realize that this Demon was at an unfathomably high Realm, yet she deigned to put on an act for him. It was easy to imagine just how desperate the Queen Mother’s current situation was. He wondered if those Nine Great True Immortals were truly so formidable that they had the Queen Mother completely under their thumbs.

Opening his eyes, Zou Feng’s Divine Soul detached from his sea of consciousness.

"Great Universal Hand (Transcendence), Progress: 18%."

Talking "face-to-face" with the Queen Mother of the Western Heaven had caused him an unknown degree of mental pollution, which astonishingly caused the Cultivation progress of his Great Universal Hand to surge by a full ten points! At this rate, Zou Feng wished the Queen Mother of the Western Heaven would come to have a heart-to-heart chat with him every single night.

Standing up, Zou Feng sensed his current condition. Not only had he fully recovered, but his strength had also surged by a large margin. The effects of the External Pill Refined from the Golden-winged Roc were still ongoing. His Tribulation-Indestructible Body benefited tremendously as well; at this rate, he was not far from breaking through to the Realm of Transcendence.

However, the buffs brought by the Golden-winged Roc somehow came with an extra side effect. Zou Feng looked down at a certain spot, feeling an intense craving for some deep physical exchange. He was just about to head out and grab a random Dao Companion when a knock sounded at the door. Zou Feng’s nose twitched; with such a heavy scent of foot odor, it was obviously Su Qingyu. She arrived at the perfect time!

"Palace Master, please come in!" Zou Feng called out.

He had originally thought Su Qingyu came specifically for an "exchange," and her first action upon entering would be to immediately get physical with her feet. To his surprise, Su Qingyu wore a very serious expression, not at all looking like she was here for intimacy.

"Palace Master, is something on your mind?" Zou Feng asked first.

Su Qingyu nodded before saying, "Regarding your Maid, Zhu Caiwei, haven’t you noticed anything wrong?"

Wrong? Zou Feng subconsciously opened the List of Gods. Zhu Caiwei’s name was not on it, which meant there was nothing wrong.

"Palace Master, just tell me straight!"

"Don’t tell me you can’t tell that Zhu Caiwei will probably achieve Nascent Soul Formation very soon!"

Hearing this, Zou Feng roughly guessed what Su Qingyu was trying to say. He smiled faintly. "If Zhu Caiwei can form a Nascent Soul, that is a cause for celebration!"

"And if she achieves Nascent Soul Formation a step ahead of you, then what?"

Zou Feng shrugged. "I have no reason to be jealous of my own Maid..."

"You..." Seeing Zou Feng’s completely indifferent attitude, Su Qingyu assumed he simply hadn’t realized the severity of the situation. She was just about to mention how Zhu Caiwei had been looking at Yue Ya with crooked intentions earlier today, but Zou Feng waved his hand again.

"Palace Master, you don’t need to overthink this. I understand what you’re worried about.

"But it really doesn’t matter. If Zhu Caiwei has no treasonous intent and continues to follow me, she will still reap plenty of benefits.

"However, if she does harbor treacherous thoughts, I will immediately take her and..."

By the time he reached this point, Zou Feng’s smile began to curdle into something sinister. Su Qingyu was, after all, a seasoned veteran of the Jianghu; seeing this, she immediately felt reassured. Just looking at Zou Feng’s expression—which could aptly be described as perverted—she knew this guy was probably itching for Zhu Caiwei to rebel. When that time came, he could legitimately Refine her. It went without saying how much benefit a Poison Demon about to form a Nascent Soul could bring him. In fact, even if Zhu Caiwei did form a Nascent Soul, he could still stir up some trouble while her Realm was not yet stabilized.

"As for you, Palace Master, you should be forming your Golden Core soon, right?" Zou Feng smoothly changed the subject.

Su Qingyu nodded slightly. "That’s right, it should be soon... Hey, what are you doing!?"

Zou Feng had already made a grasping motion in the air, pulling Su Qingyu directly into his arms with clearly nefarious intentions.

"I’m here to aid your Cultivation so you can form a Golden Core as quickly as possible!" Saying that, Zou Feng manually ripped Su Qingyu’s clothes off.

Su Qingyu rolled her eyes. "More like you’re trying to make me achieve Nascent Soul Formation ahead of schedule..."

Next naturally came an unavoidable and deep physical exchange between Poison Cultivators. Actually, ever since the Holy Lotus set sail, such "exchanges" had become the most ordinary of daily routines. Whenever the mood struck, Zou Feng would even hold a Dao Companion at the bow of the ship, cosplaying that classic scene from a certain romance-and-shipwreck movie. Only, his recreation of the scene involved them being physically linked. Before, the entire Holy Lotus could basically be called his personal harem ship, so it didn’t matter how wildly he messed around. But now that Yue Ya was around, he couldn’t do whatever he pleased anymore. Thus, during this session with Su Qingyu, Zou Feng even deployed a miniature Poison Domain to soundproof the room.

Since Zou Feng had already recovered, there was no longer any need for the Holy Lotus to travel at a leisurely pace. They sped up, heading straight toward the Northern Domain. As they crossed the original border—the ruins of the Celestial Hearing Tower—they began to encounter an increasing number of Tribulation Cultivators along the way. Many of these Tribulation Cultivators, as well as the invaders from the Celestial Number Divine Domain, were entirely blind to the danger. In their eyes, they only saw a lone Flying Celestial Ship, assuming it was just a logistics team sent by the Pinnacle Celestial Immortal Sect with, at most, one tael of True Disciples holding down the fort. Thus, they constantly popped up, wanting to test the mettle of this Flying Celestial Ship. The results naturally ended in tragedy; faced with Zou Feng’s sudden and vicious might, they couldn’t even manage to regret their actions or flee.

The Tribulation Cultivators from the Ninefold Celestial Court were basically all Refined into External Pills. As for the Tribulation Cultivators of the Yama Underworld, they were generally Refined into dried corpses. The most useless were the Cultivators of the Dubhe Divine Domain. Below the Golden Core Realm, the Cultivators of the Dubhe Divine Domain were not Divine Domain Nobility, but Death Warriors bred by them. Moreover, the Cultivation methods of these Death Warriors were all Evil Arts that exhausted all their potential to artificially force their growth. These Death Warriors, who were long reduced to mere killing machines, were not just useless to Zou Feng, but equally worthless to any other Cultivator. Fortunately, there was still a top-tier prize like Gongyang Wuji within the Dubhe Divine Domain...

As the Holy Lotus entered the territory of the Tribulation Cultivators, Zou Feng’s senses regarding Gongyang Wuji gradually became clearer. Gongyang Wuji was undoubtedly sensing him as well. However, it was impossible for the two of them to just charge directly at each other. As the saying goes, the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind; they both worried that when their battle commenced, the other side’s Nascent Soul Old Monsters might be lying in wait. Therefore, they had to wait for the right opportunity and the right battlefield to truly kick off this fight.

"Master, what... what is that!?" Yue Ya suddenly cried out, her eyes wide as she stood on the deck.

In the territory of the Tribulation Cultivators, bizarre situations were becoming increasingly common. This place was entirely different from the prosperous Eastern Earth Immortal Realm, teeming with all sorts of unknown dangers. Let alone Yue Ya, even Zou Feng had never seen anything like this. What Yue Ya was pointing at was a massive spatial rift not far away. The spatial rift looked as if a gash over thirty meters long had been torn right open in the sky. The fissure was pitch-black and profound; it was unknown which Outer Realm it led to, but the ominous aura constantly radiating from it made one shudder. There were some Outer Realms that even the expeditionary forces of the Pinnacle Celestial Immortal Sect were unwilling to invade, as the price paid would very likely not match the returns. Furthermore, even if they were to invade, they wouldn’t enter through such unstable spatial rifts.

"Monsters!" Yue Ya exclaimed again. She watched as dozens of humanoid monsters over two meters tall, sporting fleshy bat wings, emerged from the spatial rift.

Before Yue Ya even finished her cry, Zou Feng had already formed a Sealing Technique with one hand and struck out with his other palm. Those dozens of bat monsters had barely flown out of the spatial rift when they were all frozen in place simultaneously. After a brief stagnation, they began to violently tremble; the speed of their shaking was so fast that it produced afterimages. After shuddering for about two breaths of time, they successively exploded into blooming Golden Lotuses. These monsters were actually not weak, but before Zou Feng, they didn’t even qualify to become his food. Still, situations like this popping up in the Northern Domain from time to time explained why the Tribulation Cultivators could survive here. After all, although such occurrences brought risks, they equivalently brought resources.